Bloated and Underfunded...sounds like a description of
passengers disembarking the latest Caribbean cruise. Instead, those are Senator
Tom Coburn's (R, Oklahoma) odd choice of descriptors on the state of our
national parks in a report he released yesterday morning. It had been about 45
minutes since anyone else had taken aim at the parks so I guess it was his
turn.

I'm always up for a little Coburn crazy (plus I really dig
parks) so I bit.

Parked!, in his staff’s typical style, generously and indiscriminately
mixes good, reasonable points with exaggeration and misinformation.
Unfortunately, he takes 200+ pages and about 1,000 tables and charts to argue
that fees should be raised (agree!), less popular parks should be transferred to
the states (a near certain death), and budgets for new land purchases redirected
or eliminated (uh, I don’t think so). Kurt Repanshek from the National Parks Traveler had a nice summary in case you want get the gist before diving into the whole enchilada.

For all their flailing around in Excel, Senator Coburn’s
team makes good points. Clearly a lot of
thought, research, and analysis went into Parked! But if Coburn’s broader
concern is the federal budget, picking on NPS is just silly. It’s like living
in a McMansion and driving a luxury car but cutting dry cleaning to close the
gap in household finances. The pennies you save aren’t really going to make a
difference and you're just going to end up looking bad.

His core issue can be boiled down to this concept of “the thinning
of the blood”. In short, he believes new parks drain resources that would otherwise be invested in existing parks. The diversion of funds exacerbates the
parks well-documented problems with deterioration and decay.

In reaction, a couple of thoughts…

Parks Aren’t
Political. Parks are apolitical places and, for the most part, so are the
people who work them. Attempts to spin issues such as deferred maintenance for
partisan gain—or to suggest that staff conduct their work in a way to advantage
the administration (recent shutdown comes to mind)—are wrong. The challenges
facing parks can’t be attached to any one administration because they’ve been
known problems for so long. Chronic underfunding, fits and spurts of investment,
and lack of Congressional top cover are all “environmental conditions” parks
have been coping with since inception.

Lay off NPSers.
Park Service staff are average, hardworking Americans with one notable
exception. They believe so deeply in and
passionately about the national park system that they've built their careers
and lives around it. While there are certainly perks to living on the rim of
the Grand Canyon, there are also downsides in terms of professional advancement,
maintaining connections with family and friends from remote locations, and ability
to build sufficient financial security. These are trade-offs the staff
and leadership (largely promoted from within) have made because they believe in
the greater good. However, one of the strengths of the NPS culture
inadvertently creates a programmatic weakness. These are a bootstrapping,
resourceful bunch who are committed to doing the very best they can with whatever
resources are available. So most days, they’re busy trying to make the best of
a bad budget situation while not proactively or convincingly advocating for
what they really need.

Don’t Play Favorites.
In a spectacular show of keeping “govmint” out of our personal decisions (a
Coburn ideal, I believe), NPS isn’t in the business of telling visitors which parks are
better than others. Once a park is authorized as part of the system, staff and
leadership embrace the responsibility and get to work. This notion that the
crown jewels (Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Denali, etc.) are suffering because NPS
offers a geographic and cultural range of experiences misses the whole point NPS was created.
Certainly, the sweeping natural beauty of Yosemite Valley is awe-inspiring and I
hope many, many people are able to make that journey at some point in their lives. However, I don’t
think you can objectively assign a higher value to a vista than you
can the deep cultural and historical connections made possible through parks
like Flight 93 and the MLK Memorial (more recent additions).

Solutions. Fees
absolutely should be raised. Appropriations should be increased and, sure, some
organizational streamlining might be appropriate.

On top of all that, there is
an opportunity to expand and diversify the NPS role beyond the stewardship of
these 401 units. Parks, as we know them today, are almost
exclusively physical locations or destinations. They’re designed to optimize the in-person experience
(for forever) of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and learning about a place of
national importance.

But what if NPS was freed from the expectation to always
create a physical place and had the option of preserving and telling our
important American stories in a variety of mediums?

Of course, some stories absolutely
depend on the physical experience and warrant the long-term investment of tax dollars required to preserve
that location into perpetuity. However, some stories may be told just as well
(or better) through a alternative, virtual means. I’d advocate for NPS expanding their
mission to include the capture, curation, and retelling of America’s stories—without
the requirement for a physical park.

Meanwhile, let's show the parks a little love. (A couple of shots from some of my favorite park places are included below.)